The Upside Of Being Difficult

Fight or flight? When it comes to settling marriage disputes, it may be better to duke it out, hints a very small (admittedly playful) case study from the University of Auckland in New Zealand.

The research team—conducting a bit of holiday-season mischief—asked a married couple to take a “quality of life” survey at the start of the experiment. The man scored a 7 out of 10, while his wife scored an 8. Now the fun part: The researchers instructed the husband to agree with his wife’s every opinion and request—without complaint—for 12 days. (The wife was not told ahead of time about this aspect of the study.) The authors were curious to learn whether quality of life would improve for the couple if marital disagreements were removed from the equation.

So. Happy wife, happy life, right? Sort of.

While the female half of the couple enjoyed a very slight uptick in her quality of life score—bumping up from an 8 to an 8.5—the husband’s score plummeted from 7 down to 3. “The situation got so difficult for the man that he called a halt to the study,” the study authors say, regarding their experiment.

Why? While being right all the time made the wife a little happier, forcing the husband to defer to his wife even when he disagreed with her made him fairly miserable, the experiment showed.

While the study authors openly admit their research was less-than-totally rigorous in its methodology and scope, their findings nonetheless point to the necessity of at least a little marital discord. “We believe that it could be harmful for one partner to always have to agree with the other,” they explain. As another old saying goes, if you’re not fighting, you’re not trying.

But there’s a right way and a wrong way to engage in verbal fisticuffs with your significant other. For one thing, avoid generalizing your gripes into broad statements of wrongdoing, advises Karen Sherman, PhD, a psychologist and coauthor of Marriage Magic! Find It, Keep It, and Make It Last. Accusations like, “You always have to be right,” or, “I’m never the one who forgets to clean up after dinner” will only inflame your dispute. Stick to specifics, and you’ll avoid pushing your argument into truly dangerous territory, Dr. Sherman says.

Another happy-relationship tip? Forget what you’ve heard. It’s absolutely A-OK to go to bed angry. “You’re not going to resolve anything when you’re tired and emotionally charged,” Dr. Sherman stresses. A little rest will go a lot farther than some late-evening bickering, she adds.